Games
by Fierceawakening
Summary: The Decepticons have captured Mirage, and Vortex interrogates him. Unfortunately for anyone actually wanting information, Vortex gets too into his work and lets himself get distracted playing with his new toy. T for psychological torture/mind games.


Sometimes, Vortex found it tough to do his job.

Oh, not because he was bad at it. Very few others were as skilled as he was at reading someone, and therefore at finding out exactly what it took to make that someone crack. And he'd had vorns to perfect his technique, whether traditional or... unconventional. He knew plenty of methods to wring information out of an angry or defiant enemy, and failing that, he had a whole databank full of little tricks.

The standard stuff was effective enough. The tricks were different. The tricks he could play for days. The little things, like dragging in the nicest chair he could find and sitting in it and staring, while the prisoner hung there like a sack of spare parts. That was the good stuff.

And that was the problem, too. Sometimes, those little tricks got to be too much fun. Then effectiveness stopped mattering so much, which meant it took longer to get information, which meant Megatron got cranky, and that wasn't Vortex's idea of fun.

Worse, sometimes too many of the tricks meant his subject started glitching too badly, and when that happened, it could take a while to get them useful again. If they weren't just irretrievably broken.

Which even Megatron admitted had its uses - one more crazy Autobot was usually one less capable enemy. But crazy didn't help Megatron find out what he wanted to know. So it was up to Vortex to keep his little games within appropriate parameters.

And sometimes that was tough. _Like right now_, Vortex reflected, shrugging.

The other's optics widened, seeing Vortex shrug. He twitched, and then frowned, the gears in his faceplates clicking faintly. It was a quiet sound, one Vortex barely heard. Somewhere in the mists of ancient history, the time before their endless war, this mech had been well-constructed, out of delicate parts. Probably one of the upper crust, back in the Golden Age when that slag actually mattered.

Vortex chuckled. It certainly didn't matter these days. The war between the Autobots and Decepticons had gone on for longer than anyone could remember. Vorns of emergency field repairs, plus the fact that they were all on an alien planet now anyway, meant this mech wouldn't have many of those prissy parts left.

And, hell, he'd probably lost a few earlier today. Sure, a good interrogator knew torture alone didn't do much, that prisoners would blurt out any damn thing they hoped you wanted to hear just to make it stop. But one little beating was pretty much required.

Especially with someone that damn pretty. Who the slag cared about staying polished in the middle of a war? It felt good giving someone like that a few dents in his faceplates.

"What is it, Decepticon?" the Autobot was asking now, his head held high, his lip plates curling like he wasn't Vortex's prisoner at all. Like he wasn't hanging chained up on the wall of some dingy cell that smelled like rust and mold and some kind of weird organic decay no Cybertronian with a working processor wanted to get anywhere near. Like he was back in the platinum-plated towers of his old home and his interrogator was some visitor with poor manners.

Vortex laughed again, loud on purpose this time, and spun his rotors. The Autobot stared at them with that weird look 'Bots sometimes got when they were staring at something they really didn't want to be looking at. His battlemask hid his grin, but he sat back in his chair, pretending it was much more comfortable than it was, and made a great show of putting his feet up and crossing them with a loud clang.

"Don't like it, do ya, Mirage?" he asked in a carefully conversational tone. "I'm making you nervous."

"You make other Decepticons nervous," his prisoner countered. Then he cycled air through his vents, too loudly. "Or so I hear. I certainly wouldn't know."

"Aw, you're sweet." Vortex shifted his feet, the plating of their bottoms pitted with scratches and dirty with sand and grit and the detritus of battle. His prisoner watched them, transfixed. "Didn't think you cared so much about us."

_And you never said I wasn't making you nervou_s, he crowed silently, grinning beneath his battlemask.

"And I didn't think you cared so much about me," the Autobot sniffed. "Really, Decepticon, is disgusting me with your messiness likely to get me to give you anything you want?"

_It might be_, Vortex thought, his engines humming. Throwing someone off was the first step to getting into their processor.

But Mirage was right. He hadn't thought much further than that, and that could make things take a while. A while he'd like to have, but didn't.

"And you know you won't have to look at my disgusting mess if you talk, right?" He flashed his visor conspiratorially.

Then he stood up, walking toward his prisoner. That spared Mirage the sight of the bottoms of his feet, but slag, he was a Decepticon. Fresh from a battle, covered in dirt and oil and energon. And fresh from beating Mirage himself.

It might've been nice if he smelled, too. Maybe he'd call in Blot next time. Being around Blot was an experience even he didn't usually savor, but messing with Pretty Mech here might just make it worthwhile.

"You're right, Prissy Diodes. My mess isn't enough to make a classy mech like you cough anything up, is it?"

His rotors whirled as a compartment slid open in his side. Mirage's optics dared not flicker.

Vortex laughed. It wasn't anything terrifying, just a little piece of reflective metal he'd scrounged up somewhere. He pressed it into one of Mirage's hands, and the prisoner twitched as if it seared the plating there. Still, he cooperated, tilting his head down and moving his arm as far up as the chains would allow, then looking down at it.

Vortex didn't think he'd done much to the Autobot's faceplates, but the effect was so immediate it sent a dark thrill through his circuitry before Mirage even said a word. The Autobot's mouth opened with another creak of too-fine gears and hung open, obscenely slack.

"You're not so pretty yourself right now," he chuckled, more quietly than usual.

He shuttered his optics for a long moment, replaying a recent memory file: his fists, colliding with white and blue plating that was entirely too thin, feeling it give, his hand spattered with running energon and oil.

"Do you think this is funny, Decepticon? Do you get amusement out of -" Mirage's engine stalled as he groped for words. "- out of spoiling anything pristine, anything honorable, anything peaceful?"

"So that's what you're fighting for," Vortex shot back, and promptly fought not to wince. That was too much. Too giddy. Too pleased to have found something out.

But he liked this one. This one was too damn pretty ruined.

"What was it like?" he asked, his rotors whirling, his optic strip brightening with his best mock-innocence. "In the Towers. Before the War."

"I am not telling you anything about it!" His prisoner's jaw set in a grim line. "But it was beautiful, until you war machines sullied it."

How is that not telling me anything, pretty mech? Vortex thought, his rotors spinning rapidly in exultation. "And you want things pretty again."

"How can you do it?" he cried, his voice loud, his diction still perfect. "How can you wing in to a city - even one of these travesties the humans call a city - and tear it down, smearing it with your dirt and your chaos and your hunger to do nothing but destroy?"

Vortex laughed. "Easily." He reached for the piece of metal. Relieved to be free of it, Mirage gave it to him.

He spun it between his fingers. "It's fun." He'd have to beat this guy again. A lot. Messily.

"Fun? You smash and ruin what takes vorns to build just because you find it _fun_?"

"Well, for Bucket Head it's more complicated. Glory, conquest, all that slag. But me? Yeah, I do it because it's fun."

He slid a hand down the chains binding Mirage. They crackled with energy, sending pinpricks of fire through the plating of his arm and wrist. He could not have minded less.

"You gonna make something of that, Prissy? Now? Here?"

Mirage snarled, his lip plates inching back in the kind of half-grimace, half-grin he'd expect from another Decepticon. Then he thrashed so hard in his chains that they sparked, flickering with lightning.

Vortex winced at the sting and then laughed, his rotors spinning wildly. He slid a hand up to Mirage's face, dipping his fingertips in the depression left by his own fist denting it.

Mirage tossed his head and bit. Vortex pulled his hand away, too slowly. His fingers gleamed where the Autobot's dental plates had scraped through the paint there, and he held them up, staring mesmerized as they caught the light from his prisoner's bonds.

"You're cute when you're angry," he said, his rotors spinning again as bright azure optics glared at him, wild and wide.

Mirage roared, a feral sound, trying to launch himself at Vortex but only further entangling himself in the glowing, crackling chains. He wailed as more current built in them, searing his arms and frame.

"And I'm not getting anything out of you now, am I?" he sighed, suddenly sure down to his tanks that it was true. He'd only managed to rile this one up. He'd spoiled Mirage for anything but fighting, at least until he calmed the slag down.

Oh, that could be fixed, with sufficient time and cleverness. But Megatron probably wouldn't give him any more time, not when he'd clearly been enjoying himself too much. He'd probably just punish Vortex later and send someone else in to Mirage tomorrow.

After all, Vortex had done all the heavy lifting and gotten under Mirage's plating. Someone more - Vortex's engine revved in disgust -_ together_ would probably do fine handling the rest.

Or that's what Bucket Head would think, anyway. He muttered a curse, his rotors wheeling, and then laid his twinkling fingers on his prisoner's chest.

Feeling that hot plating under his hand calmed him. At his touch, Mirage stopped his flailing, going suddenly and completely still.

Vortex grinned again, wondering if he should retract his battlemask and let Mirage see it. Sure, he'd failed today, and Megatron would probably take his pretty toy away.

But until then, he might as well play with it. As long as he was careful not to break it, everything would be just fine.


End file.
